April 22, 2010

Dear family and friends,

I’ve been in this country for ten days now. I really like the Netherlands and feel as if I have been in a daze for five of the ten days due to the jet lag. It is slowly getting much better. Upon getting to this country, we just jumped right into the work! The day of and until the next morning we were able to spend time with the mission president and his wife which was great. We did some quick paperwork, had dinner and went to a popular square out in Brussels, Belgium where we did some tracting! The architecture was just gorgeous. Most of the people I spoke with spoke in English just because it is a big tourist spot, but I caught a lot of French and that day I only spoke Dutch once. This first area is basically all Dutch though.

This area is called Eindehoven; a relatively big city – it is called the City of Lights. This city is built around the Phillips factory that was started here and it employs a lot of the city. Our area is quite big – it goes all the way out to Germany and all the way out to Belgium. It is fairly modern as it was burned down during WWII and they decided to rebuild it, and as a result we have seen some very interesting architecture; it’s fun though.

The flowers are in bloom; its awesome! They have tulips all over the place here! I love it and I love Brussels. Tomorrow I will be back in Belgium on an exchange with the elders near Antwerpen. I will be able to see a little more of the country, but more importantly I will be able to meet some new people and share some very good and important news!

The weather is amazing here! It is very much on and off for the first half of the day. It will be overcast and dark, but it will clear up and turn out to be beautiful the next day!

I really lucked out on my trainer. He is very nice and easy going. He is hard working and I learn a lot from him. I love out ward too! We have about 100 members or so and maybe 75 at church each Sunday – maybe a little less but they are all really sweet and welcoming people. They called me up on Sunday and I had to introduce myself and bare my testimony. It was a little stressful though because I had to do it in another language. They seemed to understand and that was success in my book.

By the time you see me I may be a fat boy – they do eat some fatty foods here …oh well that’s o.k. small price to pay.

As for the work: there is a decent sized centrum or mall basically and we do a lot of our finding there which is fun. This week we have been really blessed! We have three progressing investigators and others with a lot of potential. Of the P.I.’s we found an Asian family that has been really receptive and we are going back tomorrow when they will be cooking us some authentic Asian food! The have two children – 5 and 9 yr. old sons. Another P.I. that we found who seems to be really excited about the gospel is Woter. He is 21 and a really nice guy. I’m excited to see what happens with him! I also contacted another guy while on the bus day before yesterday. It was really a boost for me. We ended up having a great discussion and I ended up teaching him the first discussion and he was really excited about it. He understood my Dutch and things were great, and then he gets up to get off the bus and I realized I didn’t not get that contact info. I am determined to find him again…

I love getting letters and I miss and love you all!!

Elder Leash